Vision therapy with Syntonics

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Last couple of weeks have been pretty fun, I have to admit. Watching the vision progress lot, regress a little on tired days, and then progress a ton more. Last couple of times I played Vivid Vision, I've noticed quite a bit more depth each time.

I'm excited to see what vision is like tomorrow (tomorrow is a VT day). I am currently doing vision therapy (about 45 minute sessions) three days a week. Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday. Weekends tend to be good days because I'm more rested on those days. Wednesday is good because it's smack in the middle of the week.

It's fun, because it feels like I finally figured out what's works and the progress is undeniable. It's a matter of staying on course and staying focused.

Thursday, November 16, 2017

I'm seeing real progress. It just keeps coming, and it's coming very quickly. Yesterday while playing Vivid Vision, things were pretty intense. My eyes seem to be aligning, I'm noticing less cyclo deviation, and I'm noticing less difference between the two eyes. It's pretty freaking exciting to think that this project that I've been working on for the past seven years may finally come to a glorious end. Oh well.

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Seems like things are going quite well, and that I may be on the right track. Today I did part of the fixation exercise without any prism. It was near the end of the 20 minutes. This may be the final leg. Let us pray.

Saturday, October 14, 2017

Same old pattern. Find a method that allows me to make progress, make progress, flatten out, search for new exercise that allows me to make progress, make progress, flatten out, search for new exercise that allows me to make progress, lather, rinse, repeat.

Well, I'm currently making progress--been doing the same thing for about a month or two, and have been making great progress. I suspect that this may be the final hump, which has me very excited. It has me excited because I suspect it's something I should have been doing all along, but was afraid that it was something that I would have to do because I didn't think I could do it.

It turns out to not be so bad. It appears my eyes are straightening out. I believe I'm closer than I was was before. Not sure how much time I have left to go.

One weird thing I've been thinking about is how strange this journey has been. I get the sense that there's no way that a vision therapist could have guided me to where I am, and that getting here actually requires a ton of persistence, stumbling, experimentation, locking in gains, and slowly ratcheting on up. The techniques I've developed are too meta and probably too nuanced to explain. One has to become intimate with one's own visual system, and figure out how it works in a way that makes sense to one's self.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

I might have found the fast leg of the journey. But who knows. It was a leg that I had hoped in the back of my mind that I wouldn't have to take, because it's apparently tedious.

It's stretching open the portal, as mentioned in the previous entries. I have noticed a lot of progress in the past few weeks by implementing this technique. Really hammering on the fixation cards exercise, and then casually doing Brock String (mainly for gauging progress), and then doing Vivid Vision. That's my approach at 80/20 (giving primary focus on things which give the best results).

Shit, I have learned so much. Right now what's on my mind is the pliability of the mind. And the idea that there are little things--little elements in the mind, which you can reach out, and sort of touch. And if you give those elements enough focus, they can grow, and you can begin to do interesting things with them. If you're Wim Hof, that means that you can consciously control your immune system. If you're me, it means you can be significantly more thoughtful and effective about your approach toward vision therapy. The mind is powerful. We're beginning to understand how powerful it is and the weird things that can be achieved via focus. I'm really beginning to believe that normal people can do amazing things with the right training and meditative practice.

Yeah... yesterday I saw the smallest distance ever between the double beads. Pretty excited. As the beads get closer, I'm going to have to train more and increase my sensitivity to the decreasing change between the feeling of switching from each eye. I will commensurately build on that sensitivity until the switching is entirely squashed and both eyes are fully on all the time.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

By that, I'm talking about the fixation cards exercise wherein I slowly and deliberately try to stretch fixation across both eyes. Inevitably when I stretch over to the other side, while slowly moving the card closer and farther away, I will switch fixation to the other eye. However, I pay very close to the feeling of the stretching, and I don't sweat it when I switch over. Not switching eyes isn't my goal at the moment. Stretching my fixation ability across both eyes simultaneously is.

It's a hard, tricky, and subtle technique, and one that I'm convinced I never would have discovered had I not learned how to slow down, relax, and hyperfocus my mind via meditation. Your brain and mind are doing a lot of things that you'll never get to see and appreciate without the crazy levels of focus and introspection you can attain with a rigorous meditation practice.

Stretching open the portal appears to be the exercise that is doing the most lifting at the moment. I actually don't think it's Vivid Vision. I think in my case with vision therapy--the process requires raw, deliberate, conscious effort, and there's no way of getting around that. I don't think a guy like me will ever break the lifelong habit of using my eyes incorrectly by playing a game. That's not knock on Vivid Vision--I think they are amazing, and what they are doing is amazing and admirable--that's just my impression at the moment.

It goes back a little to a previous entry in which I reflect about why I think vision therapy is so much easier for children than for adults. And my thesis is that vision therapy is easier for children not so much because of their high neuroplasticity as much as it is that they don't have a strong preference for doing anything in any particular way--simply because they lack experience.

Well, I have a ton of experience. I have a ton of experience in using my eyes incorrectly. 33 years in fact. And that, I feel, has a lot to do with the apparent requirement for me having to learn how to meditate and devise ways of trenching new neural pathways, manually and consciously trying to convince each neuron in the chain, that yes, this will eventually be worthwhile.

Saturday, August 19, 2017

I probably have five entries titled something along the lines of 'focusing on fusion'. It's something I've been focusing on lately, but in a different manner. Lately, my strategy has been focusing on getting fixation on both eyes simultaneously, and today, I think I finally got that a little for the first time.

I've talked in entries past about how I can fix with one eye and the other eye is sort of just hanging along for the ride. I can see through the non-fixing eye and its input is sort of lazily drifting around, while the fixing eye's is rock-solid. Well, I've been using that drifting image as a means of feedback to know that I'm not fixing properly with that eye. I can switch over to the drifting image, make it rock-solid, but then the other image starts drifting. Whack-a-mole. So the strategy has been to pay extremely close attention to that moment when there is a switchover from control of one eye to the other--sensitizing myself to that switchover--building on that ability. It's extremely subtle and hard to detect the instant it happens. But I've been getting better at it, and as I've gotten better at it, the less the non-fixing eye seems to drift around. So I think that a good exercise to do. It seems to be doing something.

Today near the end of the exercise--I did 20 minutes, but added another few because I was doing well--I actually was fixing with both eyes for a few moments. Controlling both eyes independently simultaneously. Singing and playing guitar at the same time. It was feeble. And surprisingly--the images weren't superimposed. But **I** was definitely behind both eyes at the same time. But if I can get to this state sooner next exercise, I should be able to build the motor ability of both-eye coordination to the point where I can increasingly easily get superimposition--err--fusion.

When I was doing the modified Brock String, I noticed I was definitely getting an X. It was really satisfying. One of the lines of the X was a little translucent, but it was the Xest X I'd yet experienced--an indicator of decreased suppression.

When I was doing Vivid Vision---there was a point where something came at me unexpectedly and I jumped and yet 'shit!!'. I felt electricity jump through my arms. That was the first time I had an experience quite like that in VR.

Another thing I noticed I'm definitely getting blending. When I superimpose things on each other--if they're different colors, like yellow and blue--it becomes green. Blending. So I have definitely come quite a ways. The indicators are everywhere. I'm going to keep doing this thing now. Keep blogging and see where this goes. Should be good.